Unemployment benefits story (sympathy or sob)

Well...

 

I don't think YF's saga shows that college is useless. What it shows is that it's not the only ticket to success. Creativity and initiative -- which YF seems to have in spades -- can work wonders, too.

 

By the way, I notice that Point of Order either didn't see my question or chose to ignore it.

I'd actually like an answer.

 

Of course. I don't mean to knock college.

If you want to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, teacher, etc., go to college, work hard, get a great education.

It will serve you well.

But there are a number of ways to learn.

I can't tell you how many restaurant managers I meet with college degrees. It's really not necessary. You could have saved a lot of money and gotten a lot of experience just working in restaurants.

Find what works for you and use any and every occasion to learn.

 

If your goal is to become financially independent, and you aren't born into a family with a reasonable amount of money already in place, then liberal arts degrees are pretty much useless.

 

It's sad, because a college education is pretty much unattainable for those who want to work there way through school without needing loans (at least for most of us). Colleges started taking advantage of the free money they got from the feds to raise tuition and state governments started cutting back because they know that students will just take out a loan for school.

 

And many of us put ourselves in hock to get this journalism degree, which now qualifies us to work jobs that often don't even pay a living wage.

A few years ago, I interviewed for the ME slot at my shop... which ended up going to one of our freelancers who had never even BEEN to college, let alone gotten a J-degree.

So that degree I battled so hard to get apparently is worth little more than the paper it's printed on.

 

Caring for sick or disabled people in their homes can also be lucrative.

An aunt of mine has been doing it for several years. And many times she is asked to do round-the-clock service. So in 3 days she can get 72 hours of pay, when one-third of it was sleeping.

And it's tax free, of course.

 

No. But you don't have to go to a gazillion-dollar-a-year private school. At least get a four-year degree.

 

Well, here's a couple of different business ideas in just the first couple of paragraphs of this article (mostly kidding):

 

If you could bring business cards into the wives' box at the World Series, you'd be rich.